There's something about Liz

May 10 2003By Andrew Anthony

Nowhere in the press code does it specifically state that newspapers are obliged to run stories and photographs of Elizabeth Hurley, model, actress and wearer of non-draught-resistant dresses. It's more of an informal agreement, although by no means a voluntary one.

Clearly tabloids would prefer not to publish snaps of the star of Der Skipper and other video classics, just as broadsheets would rather not lament the extraordinary attention devoted to an actress of limited dramatic range. It goes without saying that we'd all far sooner concentrate on more substantial issues, such as Iraq and whether Arsenal is choking in the football premiership. But we have no choice in the matter. You see, she makes us do it.

How? Through cunning media manipulation, that's how.

Take, for example, her recent liaison with the Bombay businessman, Arun Nayar. It will not have escaped your notice that Mr Nayar is a man of Asian extraction. Let it be said that there is nothing wrong with that. However, it is also equally true that Princess Diana had a thing for men from the region and that Jemima Goldsmith married Imran Khan. Two is a merely a coincidence but, as every hack knows, three's a trend.

Is it not, therefore, patently obvious that Hurley has deliberately turned her romantic arrangements into a lifestyle statement in the certain knowledge that journalists, ever vigilant to such sociocultural developments, will be forced to cover this new fashion for the East?");document.write("

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Furthermore, the pair were captured on camera last month kissing in a restaurant in the starry ski resort of St Moritz. Many observers have noted that given the circumstances - there was a war on - Hurley could have ordered a take-away if she really wanted to keep her private life private. It's precisely this kind of calculated behaviour, this brazen willingness to eat out during an international conflict, that earned her 21st position last year in a Mirror poll of the 100 most irritating people. "She should stay home with her baby or pose for some obscure mag so I don't have to see her," complained one irate reader.

Perhaps in an attempt to circumvent such views, Hurley recently posed for GQ magazine, in which she also submitted herself to a grilling from that Torquemada of celebrity interviews, David Furnish. To cite one example of the fearless questioning: "Can a girl ever have too much sex?" (Answer: "I shouldn't think so."). Nor did the inquisition stop there. "And congratulations," Furnish finished, "on being re-signed for another term at Estee Lauder." (Liz is said to have earned anywhere between $US2million and $US4.5million for her contract.)

In announcing a move to the countryside (she has bought a Cotswolds mansion), Hurley also took the opportunity to moan about the invasion of her privacy by what she called the "scumbag element of the English press". This is a familiar complaint, although not quite as familiar as that which duly followed in certain elements of the English press: if she is so keen on anonymity why does she flaunt her breasts on every redcarpet across the globe?

That, in a nutshell, is the great Elizabeth Hurley debate. Other issues that were once open to some discussion have now been comprehensively resolved. There is universal consensus, for instance, that if she can act, then it is a talent she refuses to share with film audiences.

Ian Dewar, her former drama teacher at the London Studios, which she attended after being expelled from the local comprehensive, claims that people still talk about her comic performance as Sally Bowles in the college production of Cabaret. They also still talk about her comic performance in Beyond Bedlam.

Her production company, Simian Films, has a number of projects on the go, but the relative flops of Extreme Measures and the Hugh Grant vehicle, Mickey Blue Eyes, have pretty much put paid to her ambition to become a Hollywood player.

In this sense, her career portfolio is both literally and metaphorically cosmetic. For some reason, though, there remains this furore over what is seen as her exploitation of the old showbiz formula: low cleavage = high profile.

Why is there such resentment at Hurley's readiness to expose her body, and why is the resentment greatest in those publications in which the said body is given most prominence?

For starters, she seems to wind up a lot of women. In part, this may be because she not only raises male ideas of the female form to unrealistic levels but also, unlike neutered catwalk models, she appears to relish the role of sex symbol.

Even when she was in a couple with Hugh Grant (in fact, especially then) she loved to flirt. They met in 1987 while making a Spanish film about Lord Byron.

"I met her at the audition," recalled Grant. "At the time, I had an offer to do a serious BBC project. I couldn't decide between that and this absurd, career-damaging Spanish thing. Then I saw Elizabeth and went for the absurd Spanish film."

"She liked being provocative," recalled the photographer John Stoddart, who shot her in not very much lingerie. "I remember her walking down Abbey Road in a micro-skirt and she actually stopped traffic. It was brilliant."

There was nothing post-feminist about her performance, no Madonna-like speeches about the empowering nature of female sexuality. She just liked getting her kit off for the boys.

But when you bare your front, you've got to cover your back. And Hurley's antics did not endear her to the sisterhood.

A historical opportunity for a rapprochement with her female critics arose following her split from Grant when in 2001 she was impregnated and dumped by the Californian multimillionaire film producer and playboy, Steve Bing "Laden". Here was the chance to play the wronged woman with more conviction than she managed after Grant notoriously hooked up with a hooker in LA. On that occasion it was widely felt that she could have elicited more sympathy had she undergone a nervous breakdown in public rather than maintain a dignified silence and an immaculate hairstyle.

As an abandoned single mother whose previous boyfriend had cheated on her, she has all the credentials to be a poster girl for the women's movement. Indeed, when Hurley donned a black rubber swimsuit and patent 10-inch stilettos on the cover of Pop magazine a scant five months after giving birth to her son, Damian, one Guardian writer did try to recast Hurley as a feminist role model. "You can be maternal and mean," noted the writer approvingly. "As a working single parent," she went on, "she's an example to us all."

Many other women, however, simply took one look at the incredible shape of the 37-year-old's gym-primed figure and experienced nothing more sisterly than seething envy.

Still, none of that answers why she is so disliked by newspapers that track her frock changes the way stockbrokers follow share fluctuations.

As this is England, class must play some part.

Hurley is pseudo-aristocratically posh and yet, the daughter of an army major and a music teacher, she hails from a middle-class home in Basingstoke.

More than class, however, the real problem is sex. At the heart of the press-Hurley relationship is a dynamic that is reminiscent of the impotent punter's bitter desire for the upmarket call-girl. There's the same self-satisfied knowledge among press members that without them she, the photo-opportunity made flesh, would be a nobody.

And at the same time there is the same self-loathing recognition that they - we - are helpless to stay away.

But how long will the choreographed kisses and prearranged pouts retain their solicitous appeal?

"The moment I want to get married and have children is when I am tired of being Elizabeth Hurley," she once said.

Who will be first to grow tired of her being Elizabeth Hurley: her or us? For the moment we can expect further photos of her falling out of dresses and falling in love with suitors - as well as sardonic pieces about the meaning of Elizabeth Hurley. After all, we have no choice.